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Ongoing religious scandals

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Comments

  • #3352
    Hotblack Desiato
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 35,492 ✭✭✭✭Hotblack Desiato


    The focus now had to be “on intellectual rigour

    *snigger*

    funny, but not a scandal though :)

    Scrap the cap!



  • #3353
    Hotblack Desiato
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 35,492 ✭✭✭✭Hotblack Desiato


    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-49667769
    The leaders of a California based-church have been accused of imprisoning homeless people, forcing them to beg all day and taking the money.

    Dozens of victims had their papers taken, their welfare benefits stolen and were punished if they spoke of "things of the world", officials say.

    Imperial Valley Ministries (IVM) operates about 30 affiliate church groups in the US and Mexico.

    A dozen of the group's leaders were arrested on Tuesday.

    The former pastor of Imperial Valley Ministries, Victor Gonzalez, was detained in San Diego.

    Eleven others were held in El Centro, California, and Brownsville, Texas.

    The defendants are facing charges of conspiracy, forced labour, document servitude and benefits fraud.

    The church, which represents its pastors as "missionaries to drug addicts", lured victims by promising them food and shelter and opportunities to get back on their feet at "no cost", federal officials say.

    "The indictment alleges an appalling abuse of power by church officials who preyed on vulnerable homeless people with promises of a warm bed and meals," the lead prosecutor, US Attorney Robert Brewer, said at a news conference after the arrests.

    "These victims were held captive, stripped of their humble financial means, their identification, their freedom and their dignity."

    A statement from the prosecutor added that "windows were nailed shut at some group home locations, leading a desperate 17-year-old victim to break a window, escape, and run to a neighbouring property to call police".

    Victims were allegedly locked in group homes, and forced to beg for nine hours a day, six days a week.

    According to prosecutors, victims were told "the only thing to be read is the holy bible" and "if any of the rules are broken there will be discipline".

    Punishments included the withholding of food, and if they asked to leave they were told their children would be taken away, it is alleged.

    Church leaders refused to allow a diabetic victim with low blood sugar to obtain medicine, said officials. She was able to escape.

    They were also banned from using the telephone, and told to avoid their family because "only God" loved them now, said officials.

    If they did manage to leave, church leaders continued to withhold their money, along with important documents such as immigration paperwork and food benefit cards.

    All of the victims have been identified and are now free, officials say.

    Support services have been made available to them.

    The case highlights the chronic problem of homelessness in California.

    President Donald Trump has reportedly ordered White House officials to launch an initiative to address the issue, though California leaders are sceptical.

    White House officials earlier this week toured districts of Los Angeles and blamed "liberal policies" for the city's high numbers of destitute people.

    Scrap the cap!



  • #3354
    Odhinn
    Registered Users Posts: 8,137 ✭✭✭Odhinn


    Can't remember this coming up.


    Sean Ross Abbey in Roscrea Co Tipperary was a Mother & Baby Home, and one of the largest of these institutions in the state.The home was run by the nuns from the Sisters of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary from 1930 until 1970. Thousands of unmarried pregnant women passed through their doors and official figures show that 5,252 babies were born there. In 2011, the order of nuns handed over all their records to the HSE and subsequently Tusla. In these records only one death register exists. It shows the names of 269 babies who died there. However as this RTÉ Investigates reveals the true figure was in fact multiples of this; at least 1000 babies are registered as dying in Sean Ross Abbey. Rita O Reilly reports


    https://www.rte.ie/news/investigations-unit/2019/0424/1045347-rte-investigates-sean-ross-1000-dead/


  • #3355
    Bannasidhe
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 19,218 ✭✭✭✭Bannasidhe


    Odhinn wrote: »
    Can't remember this coming up.






    https://www.rte.ie/news/investigations-unit/2019/0424/1045347-rte-investigates-sean-ross-1000-dead/

    Show me a 'mother and baby' home and I'll show you a cover up.

    At this point they should just fund a few history post-grads to go through the records of every one of them (cheaper than lawyers and even more ocd pedantic) and present their findings.
    Then we will have a written body of work with all the references noted and documents itemised and can take it from there.

    Of course access to the records might be an issue - especially when certain people are insisting they be sealed - but tbh most historians are used to that and are well used to thinking outside the box (or locked away file) when it comes to tracking down primary sources.


  • #3356
    Peregrinus
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 26,690 ✭✭✭✭Peregrinus


    I haven't watched the programme. But if the 1,000 babies "are registered as dying in Sean Ross Abbey", in what sense has their been a cover-up?

    From the summary, it seems that the "nuns' own records", when handed over, included only one death register, which listed only 269 deaths. But this could simply reflect, e.g, the fact that the nuns only kept their own death register for a part of the total period of operation, or possibly that not all of the records made since 1930 time survived until 2011, which wouldn't be astonishing, given that the operation had closed more than 40 years previously. As long as all the deaths were reported to the Registrar-General and recorded on the public register of deaths when they should have been, calling this a "cover up' looks like a bit of a stretch.


  • #3357
    Bannasidhe
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 19,218 ✭✭✭✭Bannasidhe


    Peregrinus wrote: »
    I haven't watched the programme. But if the 1,000 babies "are registered as dying in Sean Ross Abbey", in what sense has their been a cover-up?

    From the summary, it seems that the "nuns' own records", when handed over, included only one death register, which listed only 269 deaths. But this could simply reflect, e.g, the fact that the nuns only kept their own death register for a part of the total period of operation, or possibly that not all of the records made since 1930 time survived until 2011, which wouldn't be astonishing, given that the operation had closed more than 40 years previously. As long as all the deaths were reported to the Registrar-General and recorded on the public register of deaths when they should have been, calling this a "cover up' looks like a bit of a stretch.

    A cover up in general terms rather than in this specific instance.

    For example - it should be investigated why, as you suggest, the nuns only recorded some of the deaths in their own records. The nuns were paid per child. Were they claiming for children who were in fact dead by fudging their records?
    If they were then was that not an internal 'cover-up' in order to commit fraud?
    Were they falsifying the records they were sending to the Dept?

    A cross check of death register with the nuns records plus funding per child records would soon shed light on that.

    If the nuns records says they had 100 children and 1 death recorded in 19**.
    They received funding for 100 children, but the death register lists 10 children as having died then that looks decidedly dodgy.


  • #3358
    Peregrinus
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 26,690 ✭✭✭✭Peregrinus


    I think it bears investigation, but if the nuns - as seems to have been the case - were registering the deaths with the registrar general, a policy of continuing to claim from the Dept of Health as if the children were still living would look, um, dangerous. You'd be creating irrefutable public evidence of your own fraud; morality aside, why would you do that?

    Also, the nuns' records seem to have been private; the public authorities never saw them until they were handed over in 2011. If so, there's no way those records were falsified as part of a scheme to defraud the Dept of Health; the records couldn't have misled the Dept of Health if the Dept of Health didn't see them.

    There are parsimonious explanation for this - the nuns didn't start keeping their own death register until some time after 1930; or they stopped doing so some time before 1970; or not all of the registers they did keep survived to 2011; or two or more of these things could be true. I'm not saying these are the true explanations, but they are fairly obvious possibilities, and we can't really talk about frauds and cover ups until we rule them out.

    I think there are certainly further questions we could ask - e.g. were the nuns under any public legal obligation, or contractual obligation with the Dept of Health, to keep their own death registers? If they were, and they failed to do so, that would certainly give more grounds for suspicion.

    And of course all of this ignores the huge and obvious question; of 5,200 babies born at Sean Ross Abbey, more than 1,000 died in infancy. What the fûck was going on to cause that kind of death rate? This isn't a question about a cover-up, but about basic standards of health and safety.


  • #3359
    Bannasidhe
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 19,218 ✭✭✭✭Bannasidhe


    Peregrinus wrote: »
    I think it bears investigation, but if the nuns - as seems to have been the case - were registering the deaths with the registrar general, a policy of continuing to claim from the Dept of Health as if the children were still living would look, um, dangerous. You'd be creating irrefutable public evidence of your own fraud; morality aside, why would you do that?

    Also, the nuns' records seem to have been private; the public authorities never saw them until they were handed over in 2011. If so, there's no way those records were falsified as part of a scheme to defraud the Dept of Health; the records couldn't have misled the Dept of Health if the Dept of Health didn't see them.

    There are parsimonious explanation for this - the nuns didn't start keeping their own death register until some time after 1930; or they stopped doing so some time before 1970; or not all of the registers they did keep survived to 2011; or two or more of these things could be true. I'm not saying these are the true explanations, but they are fairly obvious possibilities, and we can't really talk about frauds and cover ups until we rule them out.

    I think there are certainly further questions we could ask - e.g. were the nuns under any public legal obligation, or contractual obligation with the Dept of Health, to keep their own death registers? If they were, and they failed to do so, that would certainly give more grounds for suspicion.

    And of course all of this ignores the huge and obvious question; of 5,200 babies born at Sean Ross Abbey, more than 1,000 died in infancy. What the fûck was going on to cause that kind of death rate? This isn't a question about a cover-up, but about basic standards of health and safety.

    Tbh - my cover up comment was more of a throwaway remark with a general dodgy things occured here undertone.

    Everything about the whole running of these homes needs to be investigated.
    Questions like - how did they keep the Dept informed as to how many children they had? Was it a 'roll book'? Were the names of dead children on that roll book?How much funding did they recieve? What was their expenditure on food? etc etc.

    The reason I suggested historians rather than lawyers is because a) it's cheaper, b) would meet with less resistance as it doesn't have that 'it's the law' attachment to it, c) historians would not be bound by legal terms of reference and freer to follow the evidence, d) there is precedence for historians to be granted access to sealed records (even the Vatican! I was allowed a poke around the records in the Tower of London which are normally sealed), e) a properly written 'thesis' would contain minute details of documents, references, sources etc which would provide the 'breadcrumbs' for any later potential criminal investigation (not that that is likely to happen...)


  • #3360
    Hotblack Desiato
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 35,492 ✭✭✭✭Hotblack Desiato


    Peregrinus wrote: »
    And of course all of this ignores the huge and obvious question; of 5,200 babies born at Sean Ross Abbey, more than 1,000 died in infancy. What the fûck was going on to cause that kind of death rate? This isn't a question about a cover-up, but about basic standards of health and safety.

    Watch the video, especially near the end where the male survivor talks about how once the Adoption Act came in, babies became valuable commodities

    The death rate instantly plummeted

    That's assuming of course that these deaths were all real deaths - some may have been covering up illegal adoptions outside the state - we simply don't know.

    Scrap the cap!



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  • #3361
    Hotblack Desiato
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 35,492 ✭✭✭✭Hotblack Desiato


    On a different note, a NI bus firm well known for employing people of a certain religious persuasion has gone into administration with the loss of 1200 jobs.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-49818156

    It was a major donor to a controversial project in Ballymena called "Green Pastures"

    https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-49824525
    Wrightbus is facing questions over £15m in donations to a religious charity.

    A large number of the company's employees have been made redundant after it was placed into administration.

    The Green Pastures charity, which is led by Wrightbus's majority shareholder Jeff Wright, received the money over six years.

    The donations helped it to develop plans for a huge church and village complex known as Project Gateway.

    Speaking on BBC News NI's Good Morning Ulster programme, Sinn F MLA Conor Murphy said that questions have been raised about the donations.

    "I note there are questions that have been raised about the finances of the firm and where they were spent and I think all these things need to come out in the wash," he said.

    But DUP MP Ian Paisley said that how directors spend their dividends is a private issue.

    "It's up for directors to explain how they spend their dividend," he said.

    "Ultimately for the directors, they will have to consider why and how they did those things but no doubt all of those things will be considered."

    Alastair Hamilton, chief executive of the government-backed job creation agency Invest NI, would not comment on the funds that the company drew out.

    In 2013, Invest NI gave £3.9m in backing for Wrightbus's major £15m research and development project into low-carbon vehicles.

    "On every company whenever we put grant assistance in, we put restrictions on the volume or value of drawings that can be made out of that company," he said.

    "Clearly, we can't say to a company that we can't give you grant assistance you can take nothing out by way of dividend.

    He said that the rules Invest NI put in place in its letter of offer for investment were followed.

    The top company in the Wright business, the Cornerstone Group, showed the firm made a loss of £1.7m in 2017.

    That compared to a pre-tax profit of almost £11m in 2016.

    In 2017, the Cornerstone Group gave £4.15m in charitable donations, according to latest accounts.

    However at the time it made earlier donations, the company was making substantial profits.

    The donations were always reported in the group's audited accounts.

    BBC News NI economics editor John Campbell said that "if a firm has distributable profits it can pay out, shareholders can spend that money on whatever they like".

    He added that "in retrospect it looks like a bad decision" given the cash flow needed to run a big manufacturing firm, but he added that any analysis of why the company has struggled cannot ignore "the lamentable state of the UK bus market".

    He added that an administrator has a statutory duty to report on the events leading up to administration and the conduct of directors.

    "If they find evidence of breaches of the Companies Act they report that to the Department of the Economy."

    A major redevelopment project centred around Green Pastures was approved by councillors in 2015.

    The plan was to build an urban village on the edge of Ballymena, with housing, business parks, a hotel and community facilities.

    Green Pastures said the development would create 100 apprenticeships, 80 safe houses for vulnerable adults and 104 care places for children with special needs.

    However, work at the Project Gateway site appeared to have stalled in recent months.

    Scrap the cap!



  • #3362
    Odhinn
    Registered Users Posts: 8,137 ✭✭✭Odhinn


    Peregrinus wrote: »
    .................

    And of course all of this ignores the huge and obvious question; of 5,200 babies born at Sean Ross Abbey, more than 1,000 died in infancy. What the fûck was going on to cause that kind of death rate? This isn't a question about a cover-up, but about basic standards of health and safety.


    Going on Bessborough -

    For example, going through returns for infant deaths in Cork I noticed there was something unusual and traced the matter to a home for unmarried mothers at Bessborough outside the city. I found that in the previous year some 180 babies had been born there and that considerably more than 100 had died.”


    “It was a beautiful institution, built on to a lovely old house just before the war, and seemed to be spotlessly clean. I marched up and down and around about and could not make out what was wrong; at last I took a notion and stripped all the babies and, unusually for a Chief Medical Adviser, examined them. Every baby had some purulent infection of the skin and all had green diarrhoea, carefully covered up. There was obviously a staphylococcus infection about.
    “Without any legal authority I closed the place down and sacked the matron, a nun, and got rid of the medical officer. The deaths had been going on for years. They had done nothing about it, had accepted the situation and were quite complacent about it.”


    https://avondhupress.ie/james-deeny-the-doctor-who-saved-hundreds-of-bessborough-babies-lives/


  • #3363
    Hotblack Desiato
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 35,492 ✭✭✭✭Hotblack Desiato


    More on the Wrightbus thing.

    https://twitter.com/dup_online/status/1175358929162907648?s=19

    UK and EU money going into a company which was making losses, yet at the same time donating millions to a "charity" which is in reality a massive land-speculation exercise linked to the owner's church.

    Very bad smell off all this.

    Scrap the cap!



  • #3364
    mikhail
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,862 ✭✭✭mikhail


    Odhinn wrote: »
    Going on Bessborough -
    “Rev Mother Martina has informed me that the Mother Superior in England was asked to remove her,” wrote Bishop Cohalan. “That procedure was scarcely correct. Mother Martina is Reverend Mother of the Community of Sisters, it is an ecclesiastical appointment; it was not a correct thing to call for the removal.”

    Minister Ward’s parliamentary secretary responded that should information about the number of children dying at Bessborough leak into the public domain, it would result in a 'public scandal'.

    “The parliamentary secretary is only concerned with (Mother Martina’s) position as matron of a home in which the death rate has reached an exceptionally high figure. The fact that 102 babies died in the institution before reaching the age of 12 months during the year (to) 31st March last – the total infants born in the home and admitted after birth in that year being 124 – is viewed with disquietude.”
    102/124 babies don't make it to their first year, and they had the gall to complain about the intervention! :eek:


  • #3365
    Odhinn
    Registered Users Posts: 8,137 ✭✭✭Odhinn


    mikhail wrote: »
    102/124 babies don't make it to their first year, and they had the gall to complain about the intervention! :eek:


    It's very hard for people to imagine the sheer arrogance of the Church unless they've come up against it.


  • #3366
    Odhinn
    Registered Users Posts: 8,137 ✭✭✭Odhinn


    Unfortunately most of the article is behind a paywall.
    The Vatican is refusing to co-operate with requests to provide witnesses and evidence about child abuse in the Roman Catholic Church to a British public inquiry, it emerged yesterday.


    The independent inquiry into child sexual abuse was told that the Vatican considered the requests to be improper and claimed that its officials were protected by diplomatic immunity.
    The response appears to be in stark contrast to Pope Francis’s declaration this year of an “all out battle” against child abuse, which he said was “utterly incompatible with [the church’s] moral authority and ethical credibility”
    https://www.broadsheet.ie/2019/09/27/protected-by-diplomatic-immunity/


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  • #3367
    Hotblack Desiato
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 35,492 ✭✭✭✭Hotblack Desiato


    Former US priest sentenced to 30 years for ‘horrific’ child sex abuse

    They don't do things by halves in the US justice system. You can imagine the light sentence he'd get here. Not that he'll serve the 30 years - but he'll die in prison and thoroughly deserves to do so.

    A former Roman Catholic priest who fled to Morocco before he was returned to the United States and convicted of sexually abusing an altar boy in New Mexico in the 1990s has been sentenced to 30 years in prison.

    US District Judge Martha Vazquez imposed the sentence in Albuquerque federal court on Arthur Perrault (81), a former Air Force chaplain and colonel, US Attorney John Anderson said in a statement on Friday.

    “There are few acts more horrific than the long-term sexual abuse of a child,” Mr Anderson said. “At long last, today’s sentence holds Perrault accountable for his deplorable conduct.”

    Perrault’s trial attorney, Samuel Winder, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    Perrault was convicted by a federal jury in April on six counts of aggravated sexual abuse and one count of abusive sexual contact with a minor in 1991 and 1992 at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque and at the Santa Fe National Cemetery, prosecutors said.

    The victim, now an adult, testified that Perrault befriended him when he was nine, showering him with gifts and trips before sexually assaulting him.

    Although he was convicted of abusing just one victim, prosecutors alleged in court filings that Perrault was a serial child molester who abused numerous young people over more than 30 years as a priest in New Mexico and Rhode Island.

    At his trial, seven other alleged victims testified that Perrault, ordained in 1964, abused them during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.

    The US Catholic Church has paid out more than $3 billion to settle clerical abuse cases, according to BishopAccountability.org, which tracks the issue.

    Under federal law, a convicted defendant must serve at least 85 per cent of a sentence, meaning Perrault will likely die in prison.

    Perrault fled the US in 1992 when his criminal conduct became public, prosecutors said. He was located in Morocco, where he was arrested in 2017 following his indictment on the sex abuse charges, and was extradited to New Mexico.

    Linda Card, a spokeswoman for the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, said Perrault served in the Air Force Reserve Chaplain Corps, and for a time was on active-duty status.

    Scrap the cap!



  • #3368
    Hotblack Desiato
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 35,492 ✭✭✭✭Hotblack Desiato


    https://yle.fi/uutiset/osasto/news/helsinki_pastor_suspended_over_100k_embezzlement_conviction/11003494
    The Helsinki diocese council said on Wednesday that it had issued a three-month suspension of pastor Harri Kekäläinen who served at the city's Pitäjänmäki parish.

    Last spring, the Helsinki district court convicted Kekäläinen on charges of aggravated embezzlement and sentenced him to a one-year suspended prison sentence. The pastor was found to have appropriated nearly 100,000 euros of church funds for his personal use.

    Kekäläinen was also known as the "heavy metal pastor" because he had organised church services where hymns were sung in heavy metal style.

    Church officials first caught wind of irregularities in the flow of funds in January, when the Vantaa parish union wanted to transfer 530,000 euros to a bank account held by the Helsinki parish union. However the organisation accidentally paid the funds into Kekäläinen's personal account.

    The heavy metal pastor did not inform the Vantaa parishes about the accounting error and used 93,000 euros to pay off some of his debts. Kekäläinen later admitted to using the cash in the manner described by prosecutors and returned the money to the Vantaa parish union.

    Scrap the cap!



  • #3369
    robindch
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,420 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    Although 2018 saw a six-year low there for "suspicious financial activity" at the Vatican, the place is still having significant trouble with financial authorities:

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-vatican-raid/vatican-police-raid-top-offices-take-documents-idUSKBN1WG45E
    Reuters wrote:
    VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Vatican police raided the offices of the Holy See’s Secretariat of State and its Financial Information Authority, or AIF, on Tuesday and took away documents and electronic devices as part of an investigation of suspected financial irregularities, a Vatican statement said. It was believed to be the first time the two departments were searched for evidence involving alleged financial crimes.

    The Secretariat of State, the most powerful department in the Vatican, is the nerve center of its bureaucracy and diplomacy and the administrative heart of the worldwide Catholic Church. The AIF, headed by Swiss lawyer Rene Bruelhart, is the financial controller, with authority over all Vatican departments. The Vatican statement gave no details except to say that the operation was a follow-up to complaints filed in the summer by the Vatican bank and the Office of the Auditor General and were related to “financial operations carried out over the course of time”.

    A senior Vatican source said he believed the operation, which the statement said had been authorized by Vatican prosecutors, had to do with real estate transactions. Since the election of Pope Francis in 2013, the Vatican has made great strides in cleaning up its often murky financial reputation. Last year, a former head of the Vatican bank and an Italian lawyer went on trial to face charges of money laundering and embezzlement through real estate deals. It is still in progress.

    In May, the AIF said reports of suspicious financial activity in the Vatican reached a six-year low in 2018, continuing a trend officials said showed reforms were in place. For decades, the bank, officially known as the Institute for Works of Religion, or IOR, was embroiled in numerous financial scandals as Italians with no right to have accounts opened them with the complicity of corrupt insiders.


  • #3370
    Seth Brundle
    Moderators, Politics Moderators Posts: 40,296 Mod ✭✭✭✭Seth Brundle


    Bishop Alphonsus Cullinan provides yet more nonsense - this time against the evils of yoga...
    https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/catholic-bishop-warns-against-yoga-and-mindfulness-in-schools-1.4055449


  • #3371
    Cabaal
    Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators, Regional South East Moderators Posts: 28,510 Mod ✭✭✭✭Cabaal


    Those Catholics up to it again

    https://www.broadsheet.ie/2019/11/01/the-sun-has-not-fallen-out-of-the-sky/

    Claire McGrettrick, co founder of the Adoption Rights Alliance writes:
    [Yesterday] I received records relating to my birth. I was told in 2003 that they had been destroyed. This is an excuse frequently given to adopted people.

    The sun has not fallen out of the sky because I now have these records. There is no excuse for this kind of discrimination.

    The existence was denied in a 2003 letter from Mount Carmel Hospital, Churchtown, Dublin 14 founded by the Sisters of the Little Company of Mary


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  • #3372
    smacl
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 15,777 Mod ✭✭✭✭smacl


    Two Argentinian Catholic priests have been jailed for sexual abuse of 20 hearing-impaired children under their care over a 12 year period. More here; https://www.rte.ie/news/2019/1126/1095146-argentina-abuse-priests/ Makes you wonder how much of this is still going on?


  • #3373
    Hotblack Desiato
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 35,492 ✭✭✭✭Hotblack Desiato


    Nigeria's 'torture houses' masquerading as Koranic schools
    The private Islamic boarding school in Daura, northern Nigeria, was not somewhere you would want a child to stay for more than a few minutes, let alone months or years.

    The Koranic and Rehabilitation Centre was one of series of institutions raided over the past month where parents have been sending troublesome children and young men who may be addicted to drugs or have committed petty crimes. But the raids have revealed them to be more akin to "torture houses", officials say.

    ...

    The air was stuffy and nauseating. Former students told us that up to 40 people were kept in chains in each 7-sq-m (75-sq-ft) cell.

    Filthy clothes and bedding littered the floor. Those who lived there were often forced to urinate and defecate with their chains on - in the same place they ate and slept.

    They would be regularly taken out for beatings or to be raped by the staff.

    "It was hell on earth," said Rabiu Umar, a former detainee at the centre.

    Sixty-seven boys and men were freed from the facility. Police said there were 300 people on the school register, but many of them had escaped following a riot the previous weekend.

    Over the past month about 600 people have been found to be living in such horrifying conditions: chained, starved and abused.

    ...

    Some of them were pictured dangling from the ceiling. Others had their hands or feet chained to car wheel rims.

    ...

    As the raids continue and more details emerge, they have been met with public outrage, but these institutions were no secret.

    Jaafar Jaafar, from online media platform the Daily Nigerian, says people who live there have always known.

    "I don't think there is any person who grows up in the north who can claim that they aren't aware of these schools - we all know they abuse children there."

    He adds that growing up in Kano in the 1980s and 1990s he was aware of a number of schools like these.

    "People believe that these schools have the spiritual power to heal. They don't mind how much the children are dehumanised, or how they're treated, as long as their child receives a Koranic education and is rehabilitated."

    Scrap the cap!



  • #3374
    robindch
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,420 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    The Vatican has announced the resignation of Bishop Richard J Malone of Buffalo, NY, who won few friends for his handling of the claims of sexual abuse which began to surface by the dozen last year. Mr Malone's next moves are unclear at this time.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50664458


  • #3375
    Hotblack Desiato
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 35,492 ✭✭✭✭Hotblack Desiato


    Meanwhile the Irish bishops and cardinals who covered up child rape face zero sanction.

    Raping kids in the US is just too financially costly for them but here they face no penalty. It's always about the $$$$.

    Scrap the cap!



  • #3376
    robindch
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,420 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    The pope has lifted the "papal secrecy" rule for cases of child abuse and pornography which results in - well, it's not completely clear from the articles below - though it seems to allow, if not require, the RCC to co-operate with state authorities generally, and it seems to require the RCC to co-operate, but only if requested to do so. Also, the changes mean that alleged victims and people who make allegations are not required to be bound by vows of silence.

    Predictably, it's still some distance from full co-operation.

    https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/pope-francis-lifts-pontifical-secret-from-legal-proceedings-of-abuse-trials-67274
    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-50824842


  • #3377
    Seth Brundle
    Moderators, Politics Moderators Posts: 40,296 Mod ✭✭✭✭Seth Brundle


    robindch wrote: »
    Also, the changes mean that alleged victims and people who make allegations are not required to be bound by vows of silence.
    I hadn't realised they were still using that punishment on victims, the sick f**kers :mad:


  • #3378
    Odhinn
    Registered Users Posts: 8,137 ✭✭✭Odhinn


    More of the usual


    At least 60 children were abused by Marcial Maciel, founder of the ultra-conservative Catholic order Legionaries of Christ, an investigation has found.
    The report, published by the Roman Catholic group, said 33 priests in the order abused at least 175 minors since it was founded in 1941.


    In 2006, Maciel was ordered to retire to a life of penitence after years of allegations of sexual abuse of minors.
    He died two years later at the age of 87 without facing his accusers.

    In 2006, Pope Benedict XVI ordered him to retire as head of the Legionaries of Christ over the allegations, which had been ignored by his predecessor Pope John Paul II when they first emerged.
    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-50884518


  • #3379
    Hotblack Desiato
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 35,492 ✭✭✭✭Hotblack Desiato


    JPII's crown grows ever more rusty.

    Oops, I mean Saint JPII. :rolleyes:

    Scrap the cap!



  • #3380
    Seth Brundle
    Moderators, Politics Moderators Posts: 40,296 Mod ✭✭✭✭Seth Brundle


    Sure why not attack couples trying to conceive...

    Catholic parish under fire for Christmas message condemning IVF
    Facebook page of Tullamore’s Catholic parish in Offaly was taken down amid criticism


  • #3381
    Odhinn
    Registered Users Posts: 8,137 ✭✭✭Odhinn


    Seth Brundle wrote: »
    Sure why not attack couples trying to conceive...

    Catholic parish under fire for Christmas message condemning IVF
    Facebook page of Tullamore’s Catholic parish in Offaly was taken down amid criticism


    Sure what else would a celibate man do over the holidays?


    It continued: “The process of IVF damages embryonic stem cells and thus life and is therefore completely, clearly and totally incompatible with our Catholic faith. For all believers in God, all life is sacred at all times.”


    ....laughable. However it's good to see that they felt the pressure and took it down.


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  • #3382
    Hotblack Desiato
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 35,492 ✭✭✭✭Hotblack Desiato


    OK so let's get this straignt :

    - Condemn unmarried women who give birth.

    - Condemn women who have abortions.

    - Condemn couples who use contraception to not have "enough" or any kids (yet, somehow, a life of celibacy is virtuous.)

    - Condemn couples who use IVF to try to conceive a child.

    Can't win with this bunch.

    Anyway let the likes of Irate Tullamore Parish Facebook Admin rant away to their heart's content. They're only driving more and more of their shrinking 'flock' away and alienating practically all young adults.

    Scrap the cap!



  • #3383
    Odhinn
    Registered Users Posts: 8,137 ✭✭✭Odhinn


    Even now, when you think it's all come out........


    A confidential report by the Collaborative Forum on Mother and Baby Homes, seen by RTÉ News, found there was systematic discrimination against women and children of mixed-race families.



    "In echoes of the systemic racial segregation in the Apartheid era of South Africa, mothers who were members of the mixed-race community within the various institutions report how on the one hand, they were racially profiled and their children were eugenically rated for likely intelligence based in part on the nuns' assessment 'of the intelligence of the natural mother and how 'negroid' the features of the infant were'," the report said.


    "On the other hand, when it came to the child's records, the religious orders did not record the ethnicity of a child's parents and that the default description - African - was mainly used," it added.
    https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2020/0223/1117125-mother-and-baby-homes/


  • #3384
    Hotblack Desiato
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 35,492 ✭✭✭✭Hotblack Desiato


    Well the Yanks weren't going to pay $$$$ for brown babies, were they?

    Anyway... in news which comes as a surprise to nobody at all, another leader of another order/cult within the RCC has been exposed as a serial sex abuser.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Vanier

    https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/l-arche-founder-implicated-in-sexual-abuse-of-women-1.4181170
    A report to be published on Tuesday will implicate the founder of L’Arche, which helps people with intellectual disabilities and has four communities in Ireland, in the sexual abuse of women.

    The inquiry into L’Arche founder Jean Vanier was undertaken by UK-based GCPS Consulting, which “specialises in helping organisations ensure the safety of children and other vulnerable groups”.

    It found that the abuse continued into the 2000s. L’Arche helps people with intellectual disabilities, but it is understood that none of the abused women was in that category. The organisation has declined to comment.

    Mr Vanier, a devout Catholic, died last May aged 90. One month later, in June 2019, L’Arche announced it had “commissioned an external organisation to conduct a thorough and independent inquiry that will allow us to better understand our history”.

    The original intention was to publish the report last September.

    L’Arche, both in Ireland and internationally, is preparing people associated with it for the publication of the report on Tuesday. Senior L’Arche personnel in Paris and Ireland said on Friday they did not wish to comment at this time.

    However, one source described the report’s findings concerning Mr Vanier as “devastating, just bloody devastating”.

    Another source said the findings were “very disappointing”. It is understood that senior figures in the Catholic Church in Ireland have already been made aware of the report’s findings ahead of its publication.

    L’Arche was founded near Paris in 1964 by Mr Vanier to look after people with learning difficulties.

    It was named after the biblical story of Noah’s Ark and has more than 10,000 members in 149 communities in 39 countries worldwide. Since 1978 it has developed four communities in Ireland – in Dublin, Belfast, Cork and Kilkenny – where up to 60 people are cared for. It also provides day services to more than 100 others more.

    In 1971 Mr Vanier also founded the interdenominational Faith and Light to help people with learning difficulties. It has more than 1,600 such communities in 80 countries, including 23 on the island of Ireland.

    Scrap the cap!



  • #3385
    Odhinn
    Registered Users Posts: 8,137 ✭✭✭Odhinn


    BUFFALO, N.Y. -- The embattled Roman Catholic Diocese of Buffalo filed for bankruptcy protection Friday, taking another major step in its effort to recover from a clergy misconduct scandal that‘s been the basis for hundreds of lawsuits, Vatican intervention and the resignation of its bishop.


    With its filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court, the western New York diocese became the second in the state to file for Chapter 11 reorganization, and one of more than 20 dioceses to seek bankruptcy protection nationwide. Most recently, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, filed Feb. 19.
    https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/buffalo-roman-catholic-diocese-seeks-bankruptcy-protection-69280984


    Fair play to the Americans.


  • #3386
    Hotblack Desiato
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 35,492 ✭✭✭✭Hotblack Desiato


    Whereas here we had a paedophile bailout courtesy of the taxpayer.

    Scrap the cap!



  • #3387
    ohnonotgmail
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 40,513 ✭✭✭✭ohnonotgmail


    Odhinn wrote: »
    https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/buffalo-roman-catholic-diocese-seeks-bankruptcy-protection-69280984


    Fair play to the Americans.

    Fair play for what? Allowing the RCC to declare bankruptcy allows it to protect its assets.


  • #3388
    Odhinn
    Registered Users Posts: 8,137 ✭✭✭Odhinn


    ohnonotgmail wrote: »
    Fair play for what? Allowing the RCC to declare bankruptcy allows it to protect its assets.


    Taking them to the cleaners, to the extent that they have to declare bankruptcy, which is a hell of a lot more consequences than they suffered here.


  • #3389
    ohnonotgmail
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 40,513 ✭✭✭✭ohnonotgmail


    Odhinn wrote: »
    Taking them to the cleaners, to the extent that they have to declare bankruptcy, which is a hell of a lot more consequences than they suffered here.

    declaring bankruptcy removes a lot of those consequences for the RCC


  • #3390
    Odhinn
    Registered Users Posts: 8,137 ✭✭✭Odhinn


    ohnonotgmail wrote: »
    declaring bankruptcy removes a lot of those consequences for the RCC




    ....more consequences than they've faced here, however, which is my point.


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  • #3391
    eire4
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 6,768 ✭✭✭eire4


    Odhinn wrote: »
    ....more consequences than they've faced here, however, which is my point.

    and a very valid and pertinent one I would add.


  • #3392
    robindch
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,420 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    Peregrinus wrote: »
    Whereas Pell still maintains his innocence.
    Pell's guilty verdict has been overturned by the High Court of Australia which stated that there is 'a significant possibility that an innocent person has been convicted because the evidence did not establish guilt to the requisite standard of proof'.

    https://7news.com.au/news/court-justice/george-pell-to-walk-free-from-prison-after-child-sex-abuse-conviction-quashed-c-960419

    https://www.hcourt.gov.au/assets/publications/judgment-summaries/2020/hca-12-2020-04-07.pdf


  • #3393
    Yellow_Fern
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,612 ✭✭✭Yellow_Fern


    robindch wrote: »
    Pell's guilty verdict has been overturned by the High Court of Australia which stated that there is 'a significant possibility that an innocent person has been convicted because the evidence did not establish guilt to the requisite standard of proof'.

    https://7news.com.au/news/court-justice/george-pell-to-walk-free-from-prison-after-child-sex-abuse-conviction-quashed-c-960419

    https://www.hcourt.gov.au/assets/publications/judgment-summaries/2020/hca-12-2020-04-07.pdf

    It was great to see this. I predicted it would be overturned at the lower court. I can't ever be 100% sure he is innocent but I am sure the conviction was tosh. It is so implausible and so far fetched if you read into the small details.


  • #3394
    Yellow_Fern
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,612 ✭✭✭Yellow_Fern


    Quite remarkable silence on all the usual suspects who were so sure of the certainty his guilt :pac: Any other man would have gotten a fair trial but we live in a bigoted world.

    Media must atone for Witch-Hunt as Pell Finally Released


  • #3395
    Bannasidhe
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 19,218 ✭✭✭✭Bannasidhe


    Yellow_Fern wrote: »
    Quite remarkable silence on all the usual suspects who were so sure of the certainty his guilt :pac: Any other man would have gotten a fair trial but we live in a bigoted world.

    Media must atone for Witch-Hunt as Pell Finally Released

    Indeed.
    Gloating is always unattractive.
    Whomever the source.


  • #3396
    Hotblack Desiato
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 35,492 ✭✭✭✭Hotblack Desiato


    Gript fcukin' Media?
    Yellow_Fern wrote: »
    Quite remarkable silence on all the usual suspects who were so sure of the certainty his guilt :pac: Any other man would have gotten a fair trial but we live in a bigoted world.

    Well you appear certain of his innocence. I'm not but I'm not certain of his guilt either.

    Scrap the cap!



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  • #3397
    Hotblack Desiato
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 35,492 ✭✭✭✭Hotblack Desiato


    So Yellow_Fern do you think that this man is a liar? On what basis?

    https://www.rte.ie/news/world/2020/0408/1129233-pell-accuser-response/
    "It is difficult in child sexual abuse matters to satisfy a criminal court that the offending has occurred beyond the shadow of a doubt," Witness J said. "It is a very high standard to meet - a heavy burden."

    Regardless, he said: "I would hate to think that one outcome of this case is that people are discouraged from reporting to the police.

    "I would like to reassure child sexual abuse survivors that most people recognise the truth when they hear it."

    Scrap the cap!



  • #3398
    Yellow_Fern
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,612 ✭✭✭Yellow_Fern


    Hotblack Desiato wrote: »
    So Yellow_Fern do you think that this man is a liar? On what basis?

    https://www.rte.ie/news/world/2020/0408/1129233-pell-accuser-response/
    Well we know he has a criminal past, mental health issues and mental health treatment, drug and alcohol abuse. None of which could be raised in court.

    Also the alleged events of the story are preposterous. The idea that a group of choristers, including adults, might have been so preoccupied with making their way to the robing room as to fail to notice Pell in his full cardinal regalia had some how advanced ahead of the procession and pinning two 13 year old boy to the sacristy wall, a room which is open to anyone, with considerable traffic for the entirety of the procession, isn’t plausible and it isn't plausible that a predator with a lot of lose would be so public. We know with certainty he only said mass twice that year. How you'd even get a penis through a chasuble, cincture, stole, alb and possibly a dalmatic is beyond me.
    The High Court noted that it is not reasonable to reason that Pell had the opportunity to commit the offences.

    Hotblack Desiato wrote: »
    Gript fcukin' Media?

    Well you appear certain of his innocence. I'm not but I'm not certain of his guilt either.
    Well I'd refer you to my post https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=113082467&postcount=3393 where I stated that "I can't ever be 100% sure he is innocent" That been said this wasn't a slim majority for Pell. It wasn't four judges to three against, the full bench of all seven judges ruled unanimously in Cardinal Pell's favour. Unpreceded stuff.


  • #3399
    Hotblack Desiato
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 35,492 ✭✭✭✭Hotblack Desiato


    Yellow_Fern wrote: »
    Well we know he has a criminal past, mental health issues and mental health treatment, drug and alcohol abuse. None of which could be raised in court.

    Ever consider there could be a reason for that?

    Scrap the cap!



  • #3400
    Peregrinus
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 26,690 ✭✭✭✭Peregrinus


    Yellow_Fern wrote: »
    Well I'd refer you to my post https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=113082467&postcount=3393 where I stated that "I can't ever be 100% sure he is innocent" That been said this wasn't a slim majority for Pell. It wasn't four judges to three against, the full bench of all seven judges ruled unanimously in Cardinal Pell's favour. Unpreceded stuff.
    But, to be clear, ruling unanimously in Cardinal Pell's favour is not the same as ruling that his, or is probably, innocent; just that there is a signficant possiblity that he is innocent. I think there is probably still some gap between your position (fairly certain, but less than 100% certain, of his innocence) and the High Court's (recognises signficant possiblity that he is innocent).


  • #3401
    Yellow_Fern
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,612 ✭✭✭Yellow_Fern


    Peregrinus wrote: »
    But, to be clear, ruling unanimously in Cardinal Pell's favour is not the same as ruling that his, or is probably, innocent; just that there is a signficant possiblity that he is innocent. I think there is probably still some gap between your position (fairly certain, but less than 100% certain, of his innocence) and the High Court's (recognises signficant possiblity that he is innocent).

    It is not the same and it is also impossible. Courts of law don't prove innocence. They can only prove or overturn proof of guilt. Your post is an extremely disingenuous form of gas lighting. You know perfectly well a court can't say that he is innocent. If you read the ruling, you'd know the judge said the accuser's account isn't possible (not reasonable to reason that Pell had the opportunity to commit the offences.), which is a bar rarely achieved and the closest they can go to saying he is innocent.


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